International Collaboration and the Large Hadron Collider

The LHC program at CERN is a remarkable example of International collaboration. CERN is an international laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, that enables scientists from around the globe to explore the fundamental constituents of matter. CERN was founded on a convention that states: "The Organization shall have no concern with work for military requirements and the results of its experimental and theoretical work shall be published or otherwise made generally available." The more than 10,000 members of the four large collaborations who designed, constructed, and now operate the LHC experiments continue to adhere to these principles. These collaborations probe the limits of the Standard Model and search for new phenomena in the collisions of protons and heavy ions. The LHC program produces several hundred scientific publications each year. Currently, CERN is preparing for an upgrade in luminosity for the LHC accelerator facility and upgrades for ATLAS and CMS detectors for the HL-LHC are well underway.